DMDK to implead in Loksatta Party’s Assembly live telecast case

Tuesday, July 21st, 2015 @ 8:16PM

Loksatta Party welcomes the DMDK party’s move to implead in the Assembly live telecast case in Madras High Court.

Loksatta has been long fighting for transparency in assembly proceedings and filed the PIL in Madras HC after innumerous signature campaigns and petitions to the government. However the government has been lackadaisical in this regard and has opposed the demand for live telecast.

Mr. Vijayakanth in his plea has mentioned that the Tamil Nadu Information and Public relations department has spent Rs 55 crores for advertisements and propaganda in the last 3 years. He also has demanded that a 24 hour TV channel exclusive for assembly proceedings and has mentioned that unfortunate and unruly incidents take place in various legislative assemblies as well as in the parliament.

He has also demanded that private channels too should be allowed in the assembly as in the case of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

He said that Captain TV is ready to telecast the assembly proceedings free of cost as the government is citing financial constraints to telecast the same.
It is to be noted that the Tamil Nadu government earlier has two reasons for refusing assembly live telecast: Financial constraint and Assemblies in other states of India do not telecast the proceedings.

The CJ bench ordered to file a counter affidavit explaining these reasons. In the detailed counter affidavit the government has elaborated the cost involved to build the infrastructure to do a live telecast and has listed the status in various state assemblies.